As the holiday season kicks into high gear, scam artists target colleges, primarily because of the large body of inexperienced youth on campus. Sacramento State, according to a local scam artist, is a target during the holiday season.

“The best time of year to sell on a college campus was the summer, holidays, when people are off or right when people get into school, because there are new freshman around that time,” said a local scam artist who would only speak under the condition of anonymity.

One scam involves the sale of overpriced speakers from the back of a van. They approach schools because of their proximity to ATMs and easy cash.

“There’s multiple locations that we hit,” said the scammer. “College campus parking lots are one of them because there’s an ATM there that you can swipe multiple times. You can get out with $400-$1000. We normally hit bank parking lots, Home Depots, gas stations, Wal-Mart and colleges. Anyplace near an ATM with lots of people near it.”

“If they (the solicitors) are not between the ramp and the Union, or in front of the bookstore, 99 percent of the time, what they’re doing is not approved under university policy,” said Lou Camera, director of Student Activities.

Students could be bilked out of hundreds of dollars. The speakers are usually sold at around $1,600-2,000, but the scammers–because they claim they need to liquidate the shipment as fast as possible–are willing to accept far less. The selling price for a speaker is around $300, hundreds more than the actual price, according to the scam artist.

“You wouldn’t find these speakers in any regular store. They’re sh–ty. They’re worth like $100. Maybe $50 to $100.”

“You’d have a laminated spec sheet which was doctored to list a price much higher than the speakers were worth. We’d have markups that were 600-800% higher than their actual value. (Our company would) buy an ad in a home stereo magazine, and when you were selling the speakers you’d show them the ad. People would think that we were legitimate,” said the scammer.

Most victims aren’t even aware that they’ve been cheated until it’s too late. Nathan Rosecrans, a student at the University of California, San Diego, was ripped off by scam artists while attending Sacramento City College.

“I felt cheated.” said Rosecrans, who purchased the speakers from a scammer. “I never reported this to the police. I didn’t even get their license plate.”

John Hamrick, a University Police Public Information officer, acknowledged that scams are underreported because of the “unwillingness of victims to report that they have been scammed.”

“The department has received, three-five cases of victims being scammed over the last five years,” Hamrick said. “This does not include persons soliciting something on campus. We get several of those a week.”

The university, however, cannot run a background check on solicitors unless they’ve committed a crime.

“In general, the university police do not run background checks of persons stopped for soliciting on campus,” said Hamrick. “If we are just giving an advisal to leave, a background check would be beyond our focus. However, if the case involved an arrest, then we would do some additional checking.”

Many of the scam artists, according to the insider, have criminal records, and arrests are rare.

“Some people at the office have criminal records–maybe like one in four of them have a rap-sheet,” said the scam artist. “They’d talk about the prisons they’d been to and tell stories about the crimes they had committed.”

One of the sales pitches that the scammers use hints that the speakers are stolen. Police, because of the apparent legality of the exchange, normally overlook the con artists’ business practices.

“Sometimes people would think that the speakers are stolen and then they’d call the cops,” said the scam artist. “Almost every week we’d get pulled over and we’d go through the same bulls–t. When the police saw ‘sold on consignment’ on our paperwork they’d call our boss to verify and then they’d let us go.”

The inability of university police to arrest–and therefore run background checks–on scam artists, could represent a possible threat to the safety of students.

In 2001, Citibank–along with all credit card companies–was kicked out of Sac State because of an incident involving a third party marketing company hired by Citibank.

The marketing company asked students to fill credit card applications and hired staff without checking their backgrounds. Police found that, after university police cited several legitimate credit card vendors for violating campus conduct rules, some of the solicitors had criminal records. One vendor had a three-page rap sheet. Another had an outstanding felony warrant for his arrest and a sheaf of completed applications.

The felon had collected 300 students’ names, phone-numbers, addresses and photos of identification cards.

The stereo scam, according to the insider, is a very lucrative business.

“There’s people making tons of money there,” said the insider. “People are making a living through this. They’re in different states throughout multiple offices. There’s a Sacramento office, a Florida office. Portland. Dallas. Denver.”

“(The company) would fly you out to other places,” said the insider. “I didn’t understand why. I guess they just wanted to change up the faces. I guess when you go to different offices their pitch is different. Your old pitch becomes a new pitch. These guys are really clever.”

Camera and Hamrick both believe that students need to be better informed on the possible dangers of being scammed.

“Caveat Emptor,” said Camera. “Let the buyer beware.”